So, which is better: sending a crop of incompetent cronies and even more incompetent kids of cronies to staff America's most ambitious foreign policy project since the Marshall Plan, the rebuilding of a hostile nation from scratch? Or, Staffing America's largest embassy with professionals who don't want to be there and don't believe in the mission in the first place?
Reaping what she sowed as National Security Adviser, now as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice is facing a
mutiny of foreign service officers refusing to be drafted for Station Baghdad.
I was fairly shocked to hear Henry K. Thomas Jr, the Director General of the Foreign Service, defending this new policy -- drafting career diplomats for hazardous duty in the Green Zone. I shouldn't have been, but I didn't expect him to take this tack.
A poll conducted this month by the American Foreign Service Association found that only 12 percent of officers "believe that . . . Rice is fighting for them," union president John K. Naland said at yesterday's meeting, which was first reported by the Associated Press.
"That's their right. But they're wrong," said Thomas, who appeared to grow increasingly agitated as the questioning became more pointed.
"Sometimes, if it's 88 to 12, maybe the 88 percent are correct," Naland said.
"Eighty-eight percent of the country believed in slavery at one time. Was that correct?" Thomas responded, saying he was "insulted." Rice is fighting hard for them, he said.
Whaaaaaa?
Okay, first of all, the poll was not of the whole country Mr. Thomas. It was of the people likely to be put in harm's way. In any other country, an embassy in the middle of a war zone would be shut down, and these people know that. I assure you that if you polled people who were slaves in the 1800's, you'd have near 100% agreement that the government wasn't "fighting for them."
This truly blew my mind, and I didn't fully appreciate it until I saw the clip. Director Thomas I'm sure is a very professional and accomplished man. But to see an African-American standing defiant, defending his African-American Boss's edict that a form of involuntary servitude was proper policy by raising the specter of public opinion towards another form of involuntary service -- slavery -- was simply stunning.
I hate to put it this way, but after that kind of crack I'm pretty sure that Mr. Thomas' nieces and nephews aren't the only one's who call him "Uncle." I morn for your soul Mr. Thomas, because today is the day you lost it.
It's yet another, "with us or against us" moment, pure demagoguery. But Director Thomas wasn't the only one playing this game today. The PrezNitWit himself was at it again, if you can glean anything comprehensible from the gibberish
his supporters laughingly call "speech."
Holden documents the atrocities, but the
Gateway Pundit zeros in on the target
de jure, MoveOn.org, Bloggers, and Code Pink protesters. If he was going in any kind of order, that means I'm number two on the hit list. They'll be rounding me up sometime after they arrest the MoveOn folks and before they arrest the Code Pink ladies. Good company, I'll bring the beer. But the whole thrust of the speech was summed up in this segment:
"Given the nature of the enemy and the words of its leaders, politicians who deny that we are at war are either being disingenuous or naïve. Either way, it is dangerous for our country. We are at war—and we cannot win this war by wishing it away or pretending it does not exist."
It really boils down the same old thing. The petulant piss-ant Resident of the West Wing says unless Congress does as he demands, we're all going to die. JeeZuz George, get a new act. And take that pet bull-dog, Cheney, out for a walk in traffic with you.
So, we can add the Department of State to the list of agencies the Bush administration has destroyed as an institution, one once filled with dedicated public servants that now is just a hollow shell of itself, useful only as a mere appendage of the President's whims instead of it's forgotten primary mission -- pubic service.
The Army is broken, the Justice Department is just a mess and needs to be completely purged, the
Department of Labor might as well be called the department of union busting, the
Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn't want the tools to do it's job. Small wonder that
over a score of high ranking appointees left under a cloud of controversy. These people are pirates in blue suits.
Exposing the lack of compassion by conservatives and
debunking right wing hypocrisy at every opportunity.
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